How You Remind Me
by a daughter called random
Summary: Wall-central Petlar long!songfic. Rated M just to be safe! Spoilers for The Wall and Brave New World


Welcome, gutan tag, bonjour, hola, hi :D

If you live in Britain and you're reading this and your interested, drop us a message on your views on this balls-up the government call a General Election. What happened to you, Mr. Long-legged Cleggy-Weggy?! WHAT HAPPENED?! - rant over. Sorry about that.

This took me soooo long. And I am worried it's crappy. But then again it may be good.  
It is ridiculously long so...yeah, get your reading specs on.

Disclaimer: I do not own the song How You Remind Me, that's Nickelback's. Neither do I own Heroes - if I did, Sylar would stop fannying around with Claire and realize some kind of undying love for Peter, and the aforementioned cheerleader would have about as much regenerative powers as a frozen garden pea.

Reviews are love and I need cheering up or the British Parliament won't be the only thing that's hung...

And on that note, enjoy :)**____**

* * *

**_Never made it as a wise man_**__

Watches. Sprawled out like broken lovers on his table. Slowly ticking. Or not ticking. Or ticking out of time. Or too fast. The dates on them, all wrong. He thinks. Well, they may all be right. Or wrong. Sylar is confused. 

Is it 2010? Or...a year after? Two? Three? It's three... most definitely three.

Three..._tick_....three..._tock_...all...alone..._tick_ trying..._tock_...to fix watches..._tick_…like a good little…_tock_… Gabriel Gray.

Air rippled out of Sylar's nostrils irately at that idea spiking his relatively passive train of thought. Although his desires no longer lie in the realms of nefarious murder, Sylar, as long and he lives and breathes (and that's going to be a bloody long time) will never stoop so very, very low as to be Gabriel Gray again. He was a drip. A nothing. A clever, quiet, loving little piece of shit.

So there.

**_I couldn't cut it as a poor man stealing_**__

But, then again, was he any better as Sylar – the psychopathic, cold-blooded serial killer? Taking what he considered his when he actually had no right to it. At least people liked Gabriel Gray! __

Well. He says _liked_. Virginia Gray loved him. There were the odd few geeks that hung around with him in his hellish days of education. Elle _fucking _Bishop liked Gabriel Gray. 

But no, he doesn't suppose he was any better being Sylar. But Gabriel Gray still isn't an option.

**_Tired of living like a blind man  
I'm sick of sight without a sense of feeling_**

Sylar lifts a watch up gently to his ear, sighs, listens to its rhythmical music, sits in silence, cradling the thing, the only thing he loves. He's lost his way. He is still so lost. He barely remembers what the word love means. And then -

**_And this is how you remind me of what I really am_**

A heart beat. A heart beat? A heart beat! Love, watch, Gabriel forgotten, it slips from his fingers, he runs. "_Hello?!_" A shout in the silence. Where is it? Who is it? Little heart beat, where are you?

_Clang. Clang. Clang._

Sylar whirls. He sees. He reaches out and touches human flesh with a trembling hand. And his heart swells and there is the sound of ticking all around him. The watches. Gabriel. Sylar. The watches. And him...

"Peter- is it really you?"

**_It's not like you to say sorry  
_**  
Peter doesn't understand his hatred for Sylar. He ripped his niece's skull open. He kissed his mother. He slaughtered his brother. Peter has every right under the sun to hate Sylar. But he is getting tired of hating him.

"Look, I'm sorry you're stuck here with me" Peter, furious, does not reply that first ever time he hears the word pass Sylar's lips. "You wanna get me out, just to save this girl of yours? Um, god...can't remember her name, sorry"

Frown_. Punch._

Peter sees the pain in Sylar's eyes when he smacks him in the jaw. He sees the red blood well at his mouth then heal. He sees when Sylar rubs his sore chin.

And he acts on impulse. He lunges. Sylar flinches uncharacteristically. Peter grabs his face. Kisses him. Suddenly, horrifically kisses him. Pulls away. Too quickly. Too slowly.

Sylar's thick eyebrows barely greet his hairline as they fly higher than it in a greatly amused expression that, in the younger mans eyes, makes him impossibly better-looking. Peter blushes in discomfort and antagonism. "I-uh-"  
"Kissing it better?" Another frown mars Peter's handsome features at Sylar's words. He didn't expect that, he wanted a different excuse. He can't think of his reason. Essentially, yes, that is what he was doing. But how...? The older, taller man taps his temple. "Call it an intuition" Sylar's mocking grin sends a shiver of lord-knows-what down Peter's spine.  
"Oh, um, right– sor-" Sylar doesn't hear the apology. He is too busy finishing the kiss Peter started.

**_I was waiting on a different story_**

Sylar found himself curled into the foetal position on the ground, gazing wide-eyed at The Wall. The Wall in his mind, in Peter's. The Wall of their nightmare.

A newspaper-wrapped parcel clips him on the head then drops into Sylar's lap. "Happy birthday"

"It's not my birthday" The reply isn't ungrateful, but Sylar's tone offers no obvious thanks, the perplexity leaking into it. In his head, _thank you thank you thank you I don't deserve you- _

"Yeah, well, your copy was battered" Peter says, picking up the sledgehammer, hefting it "This one was kicking around" and he slams it into the brick forcefully. Over and over. Angrily.

"S'very kind of you, Peter, thank you" his voice is small. His black eyes reflect the mallet worriedly. Gabriel sits, clutching_ The Pillars of Earth_, not Sylar. Peter fails to notice the change. He never knew Gabriel Gray. Gabriel Gray wants to crawl away with the book, read it, understand it, and then perhaps fix a watch and give it to Peter. Sylar, however, is too paranoid for that.

"You want to know something weird? Every time you pick that thing up, I think you're gonna hit me with it- really hard" Gabriel…Sylar…the doleful man on the floor admits.  
The sledgehammering stops. Peter turns.** "**That _is_ weird," he says, his voice dangerous, slicking across the space between them like blood mixed with melted chocolate, "because every time I pick it up, I feel like I'm gonna hit you with it too-_really_ hard" He spits him a derisive, hateful, lopsided smile.

"Why?" he whispers out. Sylar wonders, when Peter threatens him, if the littlest Petrelli remembers their kiss all those years ago. It led to a very strange night. He wasn't sure whose nightmare it was instigated from but it was awkward and fumbling and sweaty and painful and by far the worse fuck Sylar has ever had. He voiced this to Peter and the younger man, ears bright red with anxiety, said they were of mutual agreement on the whole matter.

But it was wonderful, all the same. And they make a point of not talking about it. Their reasons _then_ and their reasons _now_ are two very different stories.

**_This time I'm mistaken  
for handing you a heart worth breaking_**

Sylar likes studying Peter's frowns. When he gets annoyed with Sylar and scowls at him, his smooth forehead creases with wrinkles that seem impossibly deep, his asymmetrical mouth scrunches into a pink mesh and his dark eyebrows form one frustrated line.

And Sylar loves it. It's full of so many separate parts, that it could take him a good day- month? year? time is strange in this place- to analyse it properly. But he keeps quiet about his fascination.

Until today. "I've seen that look before; you do it all the time"

Peter and his sledgehammer rarely part nowadays. He just hits The Wall. He doesn't acknowledge Sylar. "You...you had that look when...when you-"

Peter turns now, raising one eyebrow, as if to say_ go on - when I what? _ "We ran to school and I would always beat you and it used to really to upset you Pete-"

Suddenly, Peter is all Sylar can see, and their faces are mere millimetres apart and Peter is beside himself, his snarling face cutting Sylar like a knife. "That wasn't you. That was Nathan's memory that you stole," he growls like a feral animal. "I told you to stop doing that, you, _you_-." Peter cannot think of an insult. His voice cracks many times during his little fit, and in such a way that Sylar wants to wrap Peter in his arms and tell him everything is going to be okay. Their faces, their lips, are so close, _so close_, if only he could just reach forward and, and, and-

Instead, he masters the grace to look ashamed and he steps away, picking up Peter's discarded sledgehammer. Peter picks up Sylar's. In defiance of one another. And on goes the futile attempt to break The Wall.

They don't speak for a good month but, just for the long-fringed, heartbroken man, Sylar reads _The Pillars of Earth _dutifully every single night they don't talk.

**_And I've been wrong,  
I've been down to the bottom of every bottle. _**

Peter really doesn't like to get drunk. Sylar really does like to get drunk. Peter praises himself on his ability to love people unreservedly and trust people to the ends of the Earth.

Sylar praises himself on his ability to seduce Peter into having a drinking competition in a fruitless effort to distract themselves from the shrieking boredom that looms over them both. Peter was not to know Sylar couldn't get inebriated, so it was perfect. So, Sylar has conjured up from the vaults of his warped mind a bottle of vodka and two shot glasses that evening and he is looking forward to seeing what Peter does when he is fecked.

It was coming up to five years of them being together now and every so often, when they went for a meander around the desolate city, (if Sylar went off, Peter would end up going with him, if Peter went, Sylar followed him like a puppy) they would hold hands. Neither of them seemed to even notice. But they did. They had become completely oblivious to this romantic little quirk in their relationship. Sylar's knack for seduction-cum-persuasion is not a romantic quirk Peter particularly likes or finds easy to ignore. But he's gotten used to it.

Lo and behold, after about seven shots of hard vodka, Peter is utterly shedded - as in "My shed has collapsed taking most of the fence with it." He is, in fact, so shedded, he felt the need to stalk out the apartment they share, Sylar in bemused tow, walk up to The Wall, reject his shirt to the ground and pick up a sledgehammer. He then sprints, mallet elevated above his head, wailing like a pissed banshee, through the streets.

Sylar, after about five minutes of watching in amusement at his half-naked housemate running around, toting his sledgehammer, falling about the place, getting back up and stumbling off, the hammer now dragging pitifully at his side, decided he best go after him before Peter did himself an injury.

"Peter, give me the hammer"  
"Bite me"  
"Later, first you need to give me the hammer"  
"I told you to _bite_ me!"  
"Peter, hand over the fucking hammer!"  
"_Saaaaay pleeeeease_"  
"Christ alive - _Please_ give me the hammer...thank you"  
"I still want you to bite me"

Sylar reluctantly giving the poor, drunk empath a love bite was only the beginning of their antics. Admittedly, it wasn't as awkward or fumbling as the first time, but it was still sweaty and painful. They weren't getting any better at it. But, exactly like before, Sylar would still say it was wonderful.

But he'd been wrong before.

**_These five words in my head scream  
"Are we having fun yet?"_**

Peter cried that night. When he and Sylar were...ahem,_ finished_.

In having sex with Sylar, he must have absorbed his niece's ability. And now his head was clear and sober. God-damn-_it_ they just insisted on screwing, didn't they?!

One moment his was intoxicated in vodka and ecstasy, the next he was snivelling into the mattress.

He cried at the thought of Claire and Emma and Angela and even the long-gone Simone and Caitlin and, at one point, memories of Arthur Petrelli filled his mind and he cried for the loss of his Dad. At the sound of Peter crying, Sylar pulled him into the cradle of his arms and, when his lover began blubbering out names, nuzzled a soft kiss into his mess of ebony locks, inhaling the comforting smell of his hair. He said little, if anything at all. He just let Peter weep.

Sometime around three in the morning, Peter's hindsight reached thoughts of Nathan and this brought on such a spell of hysteria that Sylar became actually frightened. It went from unhappy whimpers to full-blown howls of grief that racked through Peter into Sylar, making the bed shake with the former's despair. Sylar just clutched Peter tighter, whispering incoherent words into his hair.

God, he didn't _do_ this. He wasn't _good_ at comforting people. He, as Sylar, would maybe pat someone on the head if he was feeling extremely generous, and then leave them to their wretchedness. Gabriel, if he were the one holding Peter, would probably have started crying with him a few hours ago. So, when Peter dragged Sylar's ear down to his lips and rasps five words, slurred with misery and mockery, asked in a small, childish voice, and Sylar's hand ruffles Peter's hair, as tears spill down his cheeks, he wasn't sure who he is in that moment.

He knows he hates Peter. He knows he can't function properly without him. And once again, perhaps for the first time since Peter has been here, Sylar is confused again.

**_It's not like you didn't know that  
_**  
"I'm not that guy anymore Peter – I've repented, I never want to kill anyone ever again"

Peter and Sylar have been bickering again. And Peter has sought comfort in his favourite companion, his sledgehammer. He cracks it viciously against the Wall as Sylar rambles on. In a bid for total, undivided attention, Sylar steps into the sledgehammers path, and Peter goes to swing, perfectly happy to smash it into Sylar's face. "I've changed, you know that"

Sylar's sad black eyes meet with Peter's frustrated hazel ones and Peter allows the hammer to drop to his side. He lets out a long sigh. "I know that"

Sylar reaches out and sweeps his long fingers across Peter's cheekbone. When his knuckles touch the sloping side of Peter's mouth, the side that gives him that beautiful crooked smile Peter jerks his face away. In the time they've spent together, acceptance and affection have blurred into a very chaotic line. Peter isn't sure there is normally even a line between them, they are so alien. But, with him and Sylar, they seem to have shared affection before exercising acceptance. And now, well, _now_...

The sledgehammer rolls up through the air and hits the Wall for its final time. And the block crumbles.

And it's all a bit frenzied after that. The two men, tender moment forgotten, scramble for more of this delicious white light that is spilling onto them, tearing away at the brick, desperate for more, and it collapses onto them, this blinding light, it's everywhere and anywhere, it's amazing, it's miraculous, _it's it's it's it's it's- !_

Peter wakes up with an intake of breath. He looks around. He is alone. In Matt Parkman's basement. _Alone. _

He scrambles to his feet, casting around wildly. _Where is he? _His breath comes out in short gasps of fear because he can't seem to see him anywhere and he is terrified he has awoken but the man he was with has somehow stayed trapped in their nightmare world and _oh god oh god oh god, where is he?! _

The rumbling sound is quiet at first and Peter doesn't hear it. It gets louder and the room begins to shudder. Peter turns and sees it – the Wall – their Wall. He places his palms on it, his ear to the brick, hopeful, trying to hear. The slabs shift uncomfortably beneath his touch and he realises what is going to happen and he dives away from the Wall as it explodes in a cloud of stone and cement and dust.

The orange air swirls in Peter's lungs and he coughs and splutters, rolling over to see the gaping hole in the Wall. There is a grunt and a cough and a looming figure stumbles out of the dust. Runs his hand through his thick, dark hair, looks up. And Peter's gaze locks with his. His, him. The only person in the world. Sylar.

**_I said I love you and I swear I still do  
_**  
Peter gets to his feet on shaky legs and walks over to Sylar. He is lightly coated in brick-dust, a perplexed expression on his face and Peter can think of angels uglier than this man. He swallows. So does Sylar.  
Sylar's eyes flicker to Peter's wrist-watch. "How long has it been?" he wants to know "Really?"  
Wearily, Peter looks. "Half a day, maybe more" _more, so much more, years, a life time, them, together, Peter, Sylar, together...  
_"It feels like we were in there for years"  
"Yeah"  
"Does that make it any less real?"

Peter knows how to answer. What to answer. He just, he just needs, to get, to go, now, away, before – "Let's go save Emma" He turns but an invisible force roots him to the spot. Sylar raises his hand, turns it and Peter turns with it, to face the other man. Sylar stares, deadpan and solemn, at Peter. He growls, "Does that make it _any less real?_"

Peter's ivory teeth bite into his bottom lip and he squirms to get free. Sylar's thick eyebrows lift slightly, expectantly. The force that had been holding Peter lifts and he seems to deflate, the air from his chest whooshing out of him in a gasp. Sylar drops his hand, a look of defeat about him. He knows Peter's answer. It might have been real for him, but Peter has a _girl_ to save. A _girl's_ heart to win.

Sylar feels Peter's fingers running through his hair. He doesn't dare to look into Peter's eyes and he feels mildly surprised when Peter's soft lips press into his forehead. "You want to know if it's any less real now?" his breath, hot on Sylar's skin, rushes over the latter's face, making him feel somewhat giddy.

Then Peter's cheek is resting on Sylar's, as he cradles his face and he is whispering three words into Sylar's ear. Three monosyllabic words. Eight tiny little letters. One earth-shattering meaning.

The same words catch painfully in Sylar's throat and it doesn't matter how much Gabriel stamps his feet and hops about in Sylar's head, screaming _Say it back, jackass!_ _You've got to say it back! SAY-IT-BACK!_ He can't bring himself to say it. He can't do it. The guilt he feels is immeasurable. Because he _does_ love Peter, he _adores_ him. It's killing him. He swears it is.

His eyes move to meet Peter's. Onyx black and chocolate brown. And he doesn't need to say it. Being an empath has its kicks and Peter can read Sylar's emotions like a book. A blind person could tell what Sylar is trying to convey with his bottomless eyes.

"Sorry to break up the love fest..." Even Eli can see it.

**_And it must have been so bad _**

It's like something out of a television program.

_Actors:_ Matt Parkman, baffled telepath with dislocated leg. Peter Petrelli, empathetic paramedic, bent on, once again, saving the world. Sylar (formerly Gabriel Gray), reformed serial killer, ready and willing to help his beloved friend. Eli, unconscious multiplier.  
_Situation:_ Petrelli is trying to Parkman to read Eli's mind and find out where Samuel Sullivan is located whilst Gray looks gooey-eyed at Petrelli – Samuel Sullivan is an insane carnie with terrakinesis, by the way.

Definitely something out of an American science fiction television drama series that shows on NBC on Monday nights at 8:00pm...

Moving on.

Peter, molars grinding together in annoyance, grips Matt's shoulder and a bright golden light slithers from the telepath's arm into the empath's hand._ If you need a job doing_...  
He crouches down, cover's Eli's shut eyes with his hand and, a frown of absorption clouding his face, delves deep into the recesses of his mind.

_Our biggest show yet --- gather the family- my friend...Eric with take care...of you—New York City---Claire Bennett needs some time to consider my offer—Central Park---....greatest... show ever—Emma, you will play and they will come to us. _That's all he needs. 

The invisible fingers that were sifting through Eli's thoughts retract, a coil snapping back and Peter is himself again. He stands. Goes to Sylar. Tells him. The shock, the horror in his eyes, is nothing Peter has ever seen in them before. Parkman addresses the shocked eyes: "It sounds just like something _you_ would do"

_No. _

**_Cause living with me must have damn near killed you_**

Peter turns slowly on the balls of his feet to face Matt. The man who has just questioned the integrity of the man he loves. He starts forward, he doesn't know what he's going to do, but, dammit, it's going to hurt, hurt like hell- Sylar stops him. "Parkman" a soft, quiet voice, Gabriel's voice, Sylar's voice, _how-did-that-happen?_ They're one and the same. "I've changed, I've repented, I'm not a killer"

Matt looks sceptical to the turning point of nausea. Sylar walks forward ever so slowly, bends, looks into Matt's eyes with his, wide, innocent, pleading. "Read my mind, Matt, see for yourself" Matt does as asked. He sees...  
_"Maybe this is my punishment- maybe I deserve this - all this aloneness"  
"I'm sorry - I'm sorry I killed your brother - I'm sorry I took him away from you"_

He sees more than that. He sees things that make his blush bright crimson. Things he isn't sure Peter and Sylar want other people to see. Things he didn't want to see. He doesn't understand – _those two? _Water and fire? Balance and colour? Good and evil? _Peter and Sylar?!  
_  
"I may have read your mind but I haven't read your heart" If he had, he'd understand but he didn't and he doesn't.

"Matt" Peter's voice is cold as stone "I spent five years with this guy and I know he's changed" He doesn't mention that he himself has changed too. That Sylar changed him. "_You have to trust us_"  
"Five years?" Parkman's voice is incredulous and he disregards the appeal for trust "Must have been hell"  
Peter's eyes flash as he glances sideways at Sylar "Yeah" then back to Matt "Damn near killed me"  
Sylar shrinks with hurt and only he, with the aid of his super-enhanced hearing, notices how his heart skips a wounded beat at Peter's words. Matt takes in breath to speak but Peter hurries on,  
"You gunna call me a liar, Matt?" Matt closes his mouth. "I'm not lying, it _was_ hell, but we stuck through it and Sylar's changed and, damn it all, if you don't want to help us save my friend that's just-"  
"Get out of my home"  
Peter blanches. Matt gives him a weary, half-hearted smile. "Just...just take your boyfriend, Peter, and get out of my home"

Peter nods, catches "his boyfriend" by the elbow and tows him from the premises. He does not see the nod of thanks Sylar bestows upon Matt. Sylar notes, as Matt nods back curtly, as Peter drags him away, that in his mind-eye's, Gabriel has never been smiling before today.

Outside, a few yards from Parkman's house, and Peter and Sylar are walking in silence. Peter is lost, deep in thought for his friend. He will save her, that's what he does. He saves people. He hates to admit it, but, even now, he is having tiny, niggling doubts about Sylar, and if he'll be able to- And then he is lifted off his feet and the world is suddenly spinning. "_Whoa!_ Fuck, put me down!"

Sylar has snagged Peter by the waist, lifted him up and is now whirling him around in a joyous hug. Peter does not approve. He flies or he stays on the ground. This is not flying.  
"Sylar, let me down!" Sylar is too happy; he doesn't even put him down when Peter smacks him about the head. "GABRIEL!"

_Thud._ Peter, meet ground - ground, meet Peter. Sylar's face is not as happy as it was half a second ago. "Don't call me that, please"

Peter realises his mistake but he does not understand it.  
Gabriel and Sylar are the same person, are they not?  
He will trouble Sylar about that matter at another time…if they live through their mission tonight.  
_Jesus Christ...  
_  
He thought he was scared of not saving Emma, or the thousands of people that would die if Emma was not saved but it's nothing,_ nothing_ compared to the hollow, child-like, frenzied _dread _he feels when he thinks of walking away from this night alone, without Sylar. His chest, his heart, everything hurts at the thought of that. Loosing him. Dear God, it _hurts_. It 'damn near kills him'.

_When_ exactly did he become _this_ attached?

**_And this is how you remind me of what I really am _**

Peter walks to Sylar from where the other man dropped him. Painfully. On his arse.

He tilts his face up to look into Sylar's eyes. He cocks his left eyebrow the way he does when he wants something from someone.  
"I'm sorry- I won't call you it again"  
Sylar scowls. In his head, Gabriel is cowering like a frightened child, glasses askew. Even he is afraid of Sylar- he is most afraid of Sylar. Even if Sylar is transformed, Gabriel remembers how wonderful it felt when he shattered Brian Davis's skull with a crystal. When his hot blood slid through his fingers. When his ability blossomed through his body. And that was sweet, naive Gabriel, taken over my something possessive and ravenous.

Sylar is a man with a trapped seraph in his consciousness, and with a little coaxing maybe it will be set free. But then again, said seraph, Gabriel, is a man with an imprisoned monster in his mind. And he isn't sure how much, or how little, it would take for him to resurface.

Sylar has decided after experiencing it many a-time now, he doesn't very much like confusion.

He was so deep in his own befuddled complex of split-personality he didn't even realise Peter was trying to kiss him as an apology. His face in strained upwards, lips slightly puckered, eyes apprehensive. Sylar allows him a small smile. Peter leans in closer. Sylar's hand stops the path of his lips. Peter exhales noisily against Sylar's fingers, his manner crestfallen. Sylar pushes his thumb against Peter's lip, making it into a sulky pout. He grins with a wink. Peter takes it as full invitation. Leaning forwards, his lips cruise a path up Sylar's neck - "Peter" He traces his lips across Sylar's jaw-line, smiling. "Peter, you're acting like a teenaged girl"  
"Nathan must be happy, wherever he is"  
Sylar's thought train at this moment is along the articulate lines of: _Okay…what?!  
**  
**_"I beg your pardon?"**_  
_**  
Peter mumbles against Sylar's unshaven skin, peppering feather-light kisses over it, very much like a teenaged girl, "You disposed of him and you got me, all at the same time" Peter's tone is dry and Sylar is getting a bit distracted by all of the attention Peter is granting him and isn't sure if he is joking or not. He glances quickly into Peter's eyes and they are warm and he knows the latter part of his statement was more important than the first: _You got me. _

Sylar's lips pull into a smirk and he knows Peter is getting rather distracted from the whole reason he had come to Matt, spent five years with Sylar and read Eli's mind. Sylar's settles on reminding him and he replies flippantly, "Its all part of my plan"  
"What plans that?" Peter asks, his question barely discernable because, just as the words left his mouth, he places his lips on Sylar's in an eager kiss. Definitely getting sidetracked from his mission. Sylar answers Peter's question, despite that fact that his mouth is really otherwise occupied,

"The" _Kiss_. "Plan." _Kiss_. "Where." _Kiss_. "We." _Kiss_. "Save." _Kiss_. "Emma"

Peter moans against Sylar's mouth. "Crap, of course..."  
Sylar pulls Peter's insatiable lips away from his face and gives him a burning look of seriousness. "You forgot, didn't you?"  
Peter's face imitates Sylar's serious, mixed with a dash of guilt. "I...forget a lot of things" His eyes bore into Sylar's. "...when I'm around you..."  
Sylar's hand travels down Peter's body, catching his leg and he hooks it over his own waist. Peter's breath catches. Sylar does the same with Peter's other leg and the younger man grips Sylar's shoulder so he doesn't fall but, when his legs are totally wrapped around Sylar, he doesn't even slip. "Telekinesis" Sylar tells him, like he has read his thoughts.  
Peter gives his face over to a smoky leer "This going anywhere special?"  
"Yes," Sylar says with an eye roll "To New York, so we can save the fucking world" He drapes Peter's arms around his neck and Peter cuddles into his upper body, his head resting in the crook of Sylar's shoulder. Sylar puts his lips to Peter temple and murmurs with a wry grin, "Don't start going soft on me, Petrelli" Peter lets out a laugh which quickly turns into a yell of surprise when Sylar rockets off into the sky, a bullet from a gun.

The air roars past them as they fly and it makes speaking difficult and Sylar doesn't really know what to say. He is reeling. Someone told him they love him. They _love _him. _Him_ – Sylar. And it's _Peter Petrelli _of all people!

It's ironic really. Sylar told Peter not to go soft on him, and yet, _he_ notices as they soar, that when he and Peter's chests are pressed together, it feels to him like their hearts are beating at the same pace. Totally synchronised. Like a watch. Like a _really_ good watch.

But Sylar isn't going to mention it.

He almost laughs at himself.

Because it's not like he believes in destiny or anything.

**_This is how you remind me of what I really am _**


End file.
